Monday, 3 March 2014

GUEST POST: Baby feeding is a Feminist Issue

Baby feeding is a Feminist Issue by Chrissy D

For many parents, how to feed your baby seems to be hugely controversial. Whether you choose breast, bottle or a mix of both, you might feel like you need to defend your decision to your partner, family, friends, health professionals or childcare providers. You might find it hard to find information or support. Here Chrissy D, mum of two, breastfeeding advocate and author of Attachment Feminism, looks at why we need to look beyond the barricades. Feminism is about supporting women whatever they choose to do, and tackling a culture that is expert at making mothers feel bad!

Breastfeeding hit the news again last week with reports of
one, potentially imperfect[1],
study from Ohio State University, provoking a vehement response from
breastfeeding advocates.The headlines denounced
breast milk as, “no better than bottled milk”, and were hard to ignore.As a breastfeeding advocate myself, I wanted
to scream back, ‘you’re missing the whole damn point!’

And it’s true, the mainstream media’s reporting on it latched
on to the potential ground-breaker that formula fed babies might be akin to
breastfed ones in the health and IQ stakes, and miss the point about why
breastfeeding matters, to babies and their mothers.Because baby feeding is a Feminist issue.

The study has had coverage on daytime TV shows like Daybreak in the UK, with a triumphant
sense of finality; now – finally! – they tell us, formula feeding mums need not
feel bad.Those who tried, and ‘failed’
– they encourage us to sigh with relief – need hide in the shadows no longer.Step out into the light, ye formula feeders!But if we really give it some thought,
exactly as the dominant cultural hegemony would rather we didn’t, the media has
it all wrong.The culturally constructed
notion of feeling ‘bad’ about not breastfeeding one’s child is a fake and
profitable concern that we’re led to buy into, and it doesn’t even make
sense.Of course no one should feel bad.No one should have to feel bad.

But let’s take a step back for a second and consider how the
formula industry wants new mums to feel about their ability to breastfeed.Here’s a clue, it’s in their financial
interest if you don’t breastfeed.It’s
in their interest that you give it a go, and then ‘concede’ that you need their
help.Look at their commercials more closely
next time:they want you to breastfeed,
right?No, they want you to ‘move on’
from breastfeeding…anytime now.The
formula industry benefits when we feel powerless, confused by the transitions
our bodies have undergone, and alone.It
gets the warm and fuzzies as we reach out into the arms of their cuddly
semiotics for someone to just tell us we’re doing okay and we’ll be okay.And
of course we’ll be okay, and of course we’re doing just grand without them, but
they’d rather you didn’t know that. They
need us.

To state the bleedin’ obvious, there is no reason that
anyone should feel bad when their body can’t do something they wanted it to, in
the cases of the many women who are reported to have tried to nurse their
babies and not been able. I have had minor heart surgery twice in my life,
twice because the first time my body rejected the device.Do I feel like a personal failure for having
to undergo emergency surgery to get the damn thing out?Was I thinking, “oh, I really suck at this
cardiac thing”?No.I felt lucky to just be alive.It doesn’t make sense that we have this
obsession with people not feeling bad for something they can’t control in the
first place.To reiterate, no one should
have to feel bad.

Secondly, there’s the teeny issue with the treatment and
image of breasts in our culture.A lot
of the time the midwives and health visitors who first mention breastfeeding to
us as new mums or mums-to-be are talking to women (like me) who have never
given their breasts a second thought as anything other than just present or, at
best, sexual.Many of us (like me) have
never even seen someone breastfeed before.It’s not the health professionals’ fault, it’s not the women’s fault
either, for how can anyone regard breastfeeding as normal, as the default, when
it’s all but hidden from us until that time when we’re suddenly expected to be
really open to learning everything about it?Our cultural moment doesn’t have the ability to guide us on matters of
lactation, because it has left breastfeeding behind in the pursuit of other
dominant interests – money, growth, progress, capital.And these things in part rely on tits in an
aesthetic and sexual capacity to stimulate their success; women’s bodies, and
how much or little autonomy they have over them, equals the potential for money
in the bank for the corporate leaders in many different industries.

I think it’s pretty inarguable that we, as a culture, regard
breasts primarily as decorative glands.We talk about their size, shape and position, and almost never about
their function as working parts of the female biological machine, the human
biological process, y’know, where life outside of the womb begins.

Breastfeeding is free.Breast milk requires no preparation.No products must be bought to initiate lactation, no guidelines
consulted.Breast milk as a first food has
the power to keep healthcare costs down and is significantly less risky than
formula feeding, even in the developed world.Breastfeeding is normal, not weird, and – despite what (again) our
mainstream popular culture would like you to believe – breastfeeding advocacy
isn’t about being anti-formula feeders, anti-women, anti-anything really.It wants, for nothing in return, to support
new mothers in their goals, and isn’t interested in judging them. In. The.
Slightest.

The reputation of breasts as mere sexual stimulants
undermines women, and disempowers them. A culture obsessed with aesthetic and
achieved status keeps from women the truth about how amazing their bodies are
and how much more they can do.Women
have the right to know what their bodies are capable of:growing and sustaining life. That is
empowering, that is feminism.To deny
women that knowledge, to sell their own biological imperative to them as an
optional extra is to deny them body autonomy. Of course, people say, but what about choice?
But is it really a choice for the mother who struggles to breastfeed and
receives no support from society except to console “oh well, at least you
tried”, here’s plan B?

Breastfeeding is also, must also, be normal because the
survival of our species depends upon it.Remember women being the givers and sustainers of life?Yeah, that.When we take breastfeeding out completely, we’re inviting trouble.Natural disasters are indiscriminate in who
they affect.A non-breastfed baby,
without a lactating mother around him, in a disaster situation – lacking clean
water and electricity, a multiplying ground for bacteria, with a limited supply
of other resources -stands little
chance of survival.No one in the human
race lives free of the possibility of such a crisis.

We’ve become so confident in industry to sustain us that
we’ve come to see them as normal, and natural infant feeding as something
alternative.But it’s not.Stuff that isn’t normal: capitalism,
patriarchy, artificial division of domestic and public life.Those are all things the human race could,
ultimately, do without.

Breastfeeding matters because it, by its nature, challenges
the cultural indoctrination that has led us to consider normal the preservation
of the few folk at the top, whilst disregarding the most basic rights (the
right to know what our bodies do) of a huge swathe of the population.Normal parenting behaviour needs to be
defended and enshrined in law, advised for and against, supported and
discouraged, all the while a patriarchal and capitalist hegemony dominates
prevails.

Formula feeding mums (of which I was one) should not be made
to feel bad for their choice or otherwise to use formula.That’s a given.But a culture that claims to support women
whilst all but forcing them to ‘move on’ from natural feeding, as if it’s a
race to the end, is unsupportive of the women and children it should be
protecting.

6 comments:

Agree with what you say in thus article but the fact still remains that I ff because I simply preferred it to bfing. You don't mention the fact that bfing ensures the entirety of the responsibility for feeding the baby rests with mothers, particularly as they are so discouraged from using a bottle because of 'nipple confusion'. This puts more stress on women at a time when they need to be getting over the most traumatic experience of their lives - birth. I chose to ff my second child as i simply hated bfing as it was uncomfortable and caused so much stress as it meant no one else could help me. Formula feeding is so much easier for me so i really think your view is skewed. If you love bfing that's great but don't make out its always best for women, its not.

really good piece.i was given a lot of pressure to ff my twins...pressure I ignored, despite difficulties....society now seems to view ff as normal and bf as odd. As for last comment...if childbirth was the most traumatic event of your life you either had an really awful time of it in childbirth or you have had an easy life....i also fail to see how the article is skewed...if you read it it clearly states the writer formula fed her baby......

Thank you for the comments (I wrote the piece). I'd echo what the second commenter said, I formula fed my first child and didn't take issue with people who ff out of choice from the outset. My primary concern is mothers who (and the statistics show that a lot of us fall into this category) really want to breastfeed but - for various reasons - end up switching and then feeling bad/like they couldn't do it/didn't try hard enough, when really the cultural context doesn't promote breastfeeding or support mothers.

Excellent article, couldn't agree more. I couldn't quite believe when I eventually got round to giving birth at 40 that I knew virtually nothing about my body and how it would change for pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. We rarely if ever see breastfeeding in public, women's experience of birth is so medicalised - instead of children seeing their siblings or extended family born at home and hearing about the whole things women disappear in to hospital and subsequently we hear about traumatic experiences rather than positive ones. Pregnancy, birth and raising children is all one big commercial opportunity - including as you quite rightly say formula, which is a huge market. I absolutely respect every woman's right to choose in every walk of life, including ff - but everyone needs the relevant information to make their choices, and that's where I think we are falling short: there is just not enough information about the non-commercial choices.

Can we please not fall for the marketing ploy of using the bland pseudo-scientific term 'formula' invented to sell product? It is artificial babymilk.Having been brought up by a Mum who was a health visitor it was TINA for me. Having married into a farming community I was struck at the incredible lengths farmers go to to ensure that lambs/calves/foals get their colostrum - simply because without it their chances are compromised both as neo-nates and later in life. The importance of colostrum has never been properly emphasised to new mothers for some puzzling reason. Indeed it is typically dismissed as 'watery first milk' compared to the 'real' milk! I would go as far as to say that every baby has a right to the colostrum in the first two days of his/her life. It is not public, it doesn't hurt so who could disagree with this?Having worked in preparedness planning if I was expecting now I would also buy in a minimum six month store of artificial babymilk powder because should the overdue dangerous flu pandemic explode (and as a new Mum I might be susceptible and die or get ill and lose my milk) I would not want my baby to starve if the supermarket re-supply by road infrastructure fails - remember the fuel blockade in 2000?. It keeps and if not needed could be ebayed on!